GLACIAL MARKS. 1/5 



north of Belle Isle. Moreover, we would impress upon 

 the mind of any lingering believer in the sole agency of 

 floating-ice, that the surface of Greenland is covered with 

 a glacier or rather a mer-de-glace, from which ice-streams 

 press 'through the fjord into the sea, and that there are 

 innumerable glaciers on the land-masses throughout the 

 Arctic Ocean west of the Labrador peninsula, which are 

 constantly grinding down, polishing, and grooving their 

 rocky beds. Their work is perennial : that of the floe- 

 ice is confined to the rocks at the shore of the sea, and 

 there it virtually ends; the after effects of the floating- 

 ice being so inconsiderable as not to rise to the dignity 

 of a geological agency. 



And so there was a ceaseless charm and interest in 

 the problems in geology, physical geography, and biology 

 which suggested themselves to us, whether clambering 

 over the hill-tops, shuffling over the shingly pebbly 

 beaches, now raised hundreds of feet above the sea, or 

 chasing the arctic butterflies and moths, or dredging 

 polar starpoles and the innumerable marine forms peo- 

 pling these waters. 



Life was monotonous enough to the others, as they 

 felt bitterly disappointed at their failure to reach the 

 higher Moravian stations and the promised headland of 

 Chidley, from which we could look over Hudson's Strait 

 and the waters of the Greenland seas ; but so far as I 

 was concerned, the opportunity to study the glacial 

 marks, the raised beaches, the insects, and other life- 

 forms, were so many crumbs of comfort to offset the 

 general feeling of disappointment. It would be next to 

 impossible to properly explore this coast in a single sea- 

 son without a steamer and small steam launches for work 



